Deviant behaviour in Internet communication: Diagnosis and prevention

Abstract

The article discusses the forms of deviant speech behaviour in an online environment in various situational contexts. The approach proposed by the author represents a new level of understanding of the problem. So far, the vast majority of publications have been devoted to describing the phenomenon of network behaviour that deviates from accepted ethical standards. Considering the problem in the context of a situation that is characterized by clear role prescriptions, it becomes possible to identify the motives of the communicative behaviour of the participants. This, in turn, allows us to answer a question of a different level: how to correct the deviant behaviour of participants in network communities. The findings are based on representative empirical material collected in accordance with three sequential procedures. At the first stage, the most frequent semantic equivalents of the phrase “ethics and the Internet” were selected using the Google search engine web service. In the second stage, cases were selected that fell into the top of search results for search queries selected at the previous stage. At the third stage, the “snowball” method was used — a detailed search for information of the most common forms of deviant network behaviour. The author offers a classification of deviant behaviour by two types of factors: socio-psychological and institutional. Socio-psychological factors include dialogism and game motivation, which are actualized in the context of a virtual environment. When it comes to “serious” communities, UX designers should take care to reinforce the signs of NOT — gaming reality. Among the institutional factors, the most significant is the immaturity of the professional community of SMM — managers engaged in the promotion of goods and services on social networks. In this case, unfair competition takes place, which is qualified by Russian law.